Lotus Notes gets a facelift: Version 8 beta review and visual tour

[Mr. Analog]

Those of use who GRIPE daily about Blotus Goats might be interested in this preview:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9019476/

I came to that article after reading this on /.

"Speaking as an IT consultant, the one big gap in the Linux stack is in messaging / collaboration. MS Outlook with Exchange is a fine product on which many businesses truly rely, and it is almost impossible to match on Linux ? server or desktop. The one competitor to MS in this space has been IBM's Lotus Notes / Domino, which has always had the general reputation of being expensive, bloated, and unfriendly. I certainly wouldn't have considered it for the small businesses that we usually sell on MS's SBS server product. That is why I was truly surprised to hear about the new Domino Express Licensing and Notes 8. This is a product that has native server and client versions for both Mac and Linux. Notes 8, now written in Eclipse, also includes an integrated office suite, Lotus Symphony. This could conceivably let a user do all of their work in one application. And you can now license the server and client components together for as low as $100/user. It's packaged for companies of 1,000 seats or fewer. Is this the silver bullet to take out the entire MS stack ? server, client, and Office? Or will IBM drop the ball yet again?"

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/notesanddomino/domino-express-licensing.html
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/27/2256217

Now my faith in the quality of IBM products means that I think this will bomb, but you never know. Might be something to check out, especially if you have to roll out a low cost all-in-one e-mail/office suite on Mac/Linux.

[Darren Dirt]

I know your post is about changes to licensing (a possible shout-out by IBM that they haven't forgotten about/given up on Lotus Notes, which many developers have complained about the last 4 or 5 years or so) but thought I'd comment a little bit on version 8 itself.


About 5 months ago an IBM rep was waiting for a meeting, and since he saw my "Lotus Notes Developer" sign I taped next to my cubicle name thingie, he asked if I wanted to see some videos of the new features in R8. I was expecting to be underwhelmed, but quite the opposite. The way it tied together all sorts of practical and useful "Web 2.0" features that really make sense to be integrated in the messaging client, and yet in way that is somehow not too overwhelming/inyerface about it, I recall thinking it was worthy of a "point-zero" version, and it might be helpful in combatting the typical M$ salesgoon's FUD that isn't always Fair & Balanced...


I haven't played around with it since, nor even looked online for other feature-demos etc. And the reality is I will probably never get to "play" with any of it -- client or developer tools -- unless I do so on my own in my own free time. Reality of the obvious changes coming at work during the next 9-40 months. At least I signed on for 3 years, and can be sent to training etc. so my guess is by 2011 I'll have an even longer skill-table on my resume...


PS: Analog, on the subject of Darren's Lotus Development House [tm]... r things less "crazy" at work yet?[/hint hint]

[Mr. Analog]

PS: Analog, on the subject of Darren's Lotus Development House [tm]... r things less "crazy" at work yet?[/hint hint]

You and I need to talk, I'll try calling you tomorrow.

[Darren Dirt]

About 5 months ago an IBM rep was waiting for a meeting, and since he saw my "Lotus Notes Developer" sign I taped next to my cubicle name thingie, he asked if I wanted to see some videos of the new features in R8. I was expecting to be underwhelmed, but quite the opposite...

A few more thoughts, here's a quote from page 5 of the review...

Beyond e-mail, calendaring and contacts, Notes 8 includes several office suite applications. I'm not sure how many corporate users need the built-in word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software for individual use, given the pervasiveness of Microsoft Office and availability of OpenOffice. I didn't find much of a convenience factor in having these apps within Notes instead of outside it.


However, the ability to easily collaborate with other users on such files would be appealing. That's not coming until the release of Lotus Quickr 8, due sometime later this year. It will be an "entitlement" for Notes 8 customers who purchase a maintenance contract.

There it is: "Quickr", it was the key piece the IBM rep was talking about that allows all sorts of handy modular pieces to snap in and work together with everything else. One of those "won't know how powerful it is until the marketplace starts playing with it and coming up with ideas we didn't even think of" kinda tools, methinks. In a word, "collaboration".

Also, as the reviewer mentioned, some R8 client features like "Activities" are very limited until the server is upgraded. Pretty common for significantly new features in Lotus over the years.

Strangely, the reviewer didn't seem to mention the vastly improved ability to sort/view your email in "threads", similar to how Gmail makes life easier for back-and-forth reply-reply-fwd type of conversations. That was one other thing I remember was pretty impressive.